In a bygone era, the persistent salesman was the one who knocked on doors all day.

Peddling vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias, he would go from house to house, getting rejected over and over again until he finally got a chance to make a sale.

And then he went on to the next street and the next.

As with many aspects of the industrial age, it was labour intensive and required sweat to be effective. The successful salesman was often the one who rang the most bells, the one who placed his foot in the most doorways so that he could be heard.

Logan (in the foreground) and Hayden riding ponies at Myuna Farm in Doveton.

Farmer Ed was sad.

His large farm was losing money and he didn’t know how to turn around his financial situation.

As he drowned his sorrows at the local pub, he told everyone within earshot about his predicament.

Another local farmer came up and recommended that he buy three horses. He suggested that if he bought a clydesdale, a thoroughbred and a pony, he would be able to transport his produce more efficiently, he could make money at the races and offer children’s rides to make extra cash on the weekends.

Intrigued by this idea, Farmer Ed used the last of his cash reserves to buy a clydesdale, a thoroughbred and a pony.

A month went by and Farmer Ed was again seen drowning his sorrows at the local pub.

If you’re going to have a fulfilling career, there will be times when you will need to invest in your future.

Work takes up such a large part of our lives that it would be a shame to look back and wish that you had done something that could have improved your career prospects and increased your opportunity to either find your dream job or advance further where you are.

You can choose to float along as you are, but I suspect that almost anyone could benefit from at least one of these options.

So here are four investments that you can make in your career that I hope are helpful. I’ve put them in order of cost, although this doesn’t mean that they’re in order of potential benefit: